an can be said of many genteel private
boarding-houses. The lodgers were mostly respectable unemployed, and
one or two--fortunate men!--in work; it was the casual boozer,
the professional loafer, and the occasional spieler--the
one-shilling-bed-men--who made the place objectionable, not the
hard-working people who paid ten pounds a week for the house; and, but
for the one-night lodgers and the big gilt black-and-red bordered and
"shaded" "6d." in the window--which made me glance guiltily up and down
the street, like a burglar about to do a job, before I went in--I was
pretty comfortable there.

They called him "Mr. Smellingscheck", and treated him with a peculiar
kind of deference, the reason for which they themselves were doubtless
unable to explain or even understand. The haggard woman who made the
beds called him "Mr. Smell-'is-check". Poor fellow! I didn't think, by
the look of him, that he'd smelt his cheque, or anyone else's, or that
anyone else had smelt his, for many a long day. He was a fat man, slow
and placid. He looked like a typical monopolist who had unaccountably
got into a suit of clothes belonging to a Domain unemployed, and hadn't
noticed, or had entirely forgotten, the circumstance in his business
cares--if such a word as care could be connected with such a calm,
self-contained nature. He wore a suit of cheap slops of some kind of
shoddy "tweed". The coat was too small and the trousers too short, and
they were drawn up to meet the waistcoat--which they did with painful
difficulty, now and then showing, by way of protest, two pairs of brass
buttons and the ends of the brace-straps; and they seemed to blame the
irresponsive waistcoat or the wearer for it all. Yet he never gave way
to assist them. A pair of burst elastic-sides were in full evidence, and
a rim of cloudy sock, with a hole in it, showed at every step.

But he put on his clothes and wore them like--like a gentleman. He had
two white shirts, and they were both dirty. He'd lay them out on
the bed, turn them over, regard them thoughtfully, choose that which
appeared to his calm understanding to be the cleaner, and put it on, and
wear it until it was unmistakably dirtier than the other; then he'd
wear the other till it was dirtier than the first. He managed his three
collars the same way. His handkerchiefs were washed in the bathroom, and
dried, without the slightest disguise, in the bedroom. He never hurried
in anything. The way he cleaned his